Horizon Shopping Mall (Patreon)

Battle Map Dimensions: [33 x 23] squares

Hi everyone, it is time again for another battle map drop! As an FYI for those of you who are new supporters, the shopping mall was the most voted for map in the last Patreon poll.

The Horizon shopping mall RPG battle map, set in the near future / cyberpunk world, is a thematic continuation of my previous subway station battle map - "Terminus".

The battle map area focuses on the ground floor and entrance of the mall, and includes two different levels of elevation. A flight of escalators leads up to more shops and another leads to the underground subway station.

Map Design Notes & Thoughts

I did a preliminary sketch to establish the general map layout and key features on my iPad via the Concepts app. I liked the spatial quality of this initial sketch so I tried my best to stay true to this design as much as possible.

Upon drawing the final version of this map however, it became apparent that the mall looked way too sparse. In order to fill the void with more lively details, I added floating holograms and also more LED billboards.

I learned a lot about painting holograms from working on this map. I had never really drawn a semi-transparent holograms before this and let me tell you, it's not as simple as drawing an object and lowering the opacity of the layer. Figuring out how to get them to look right was a real challenge. I ended up using Blade Runner and Star Wars films for reference. The takeaway - I'm pretty confident with holo's now so expect to see more of them on my maps moving forward!

Train Wreck Example Scenario

The most fun I had was drawing the Train Wreck map variant - big thanks to the Discord group for suggesting this one. If you used the Terminus and the Modular Train maps in your previous RPG sessions, this variant would be the ultimate follow up to that.

Example Scenario

The players embark on the monorail from Terminus to diffuse a bomb on the train but encounter resistance and a battle ensues. The group manages to take the bomb offline but the main villain runs the train off its tracks in a desperate attempt to escape. It crashes at the next station, which resides underneath the Horizon shopping mall.

Easter Eggs

During the initial design and feedback stage, I received plenty of incredible ideas from my Patreon supporters over at the Fragmaps Discord server. As a gesture of gratitude, I included the usernames of the contributors as Easter eggs all across this map.

Thanks again everyone and I wish you epic encounters on this battle map. Let me know how you go!

Next map - The Secret Facility.

Map Variants

Free sample download 

Patreon supporter downloads:

• Shopping Mall base map - Bronze 
• After Hours Shopping (+ above) - Silver 
• Train Wreck, hologram overlay .PNG (+ above) - Gold 

What is the "hologram overlay" file used for?
Some of my Patreon supporters wanted to have their tokens move underneath the holograms. Just place this semi-transparent file right on top of the base map in your favorite virtual table top software (such as Foundry VTT) and you're good to go.